Rosa, second from right, an unauthorized immigrant living with her family in New York, used to receive about $190 a month from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Fearing deportation, she has stopped taking the benefits.CreditCreditBebeto Matthews/Associated Press

By Emily Baumgaertner

March 6, 2018

WASHINGTON — Immigrants hoping for permanent residence are dropping out of public nutrition programs even before prominent elements of the Trump administration’s proposed policy changes are enacted, fearful that participating could threaten their citizenship eligibility or put them at risk for deportation, according to program administrators.

Statistics on participation in state and local efforts show fewer people are using an array of food programs, including the Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (called WIC) as well as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (or SNAP, formerly known as food stamps) and food banks.

“The rumor mill is rampant, and the fear is palpable,” said Lisa David, president and chief executive of Public Health Solutions, a major WIC and SNAP provider for New York City. “The stakes for what could happen in the future are incredibly high, and people just aren’t willing to take that risk.”

The Department of Homeland Security has drafted a regulation that would allow officials to factor in the use of benefits — like WIC, SNAP, the Children’s Health Insurance Program and even housing and transit subsidies — when deciding whether to approve some visa or green card applications.

A leaked draft of the proposal first reported by Reuters and then published by Vox showed that immigrants seeking an adjustment of status, such as those applying for permanent residency, “must establish that they are not likely at any time to become a public charge” or rely heavily on long-term government assistance, lest they be deemed “inadmissible.”

The proposed regulation could be sent to the Office of Management and Budget for processing this month, according to Charles Wheeler, a legal expert at the Catholic Legal Immigration Network. The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to inquiries regarding the proposal’s timeline and prospects.

A study conducted by the National Academies of Sciences showed that 45.3 percent of all immigrant-headed households with children use a food assistance program. The vast majority of those children are American citizens.

“The administration is committed to enforcing existing immigration law, which is clearly intended to protect the American taxpayer,” said Tyler Q. Houlton, the acting press secretary for the Department of Homeland Security. “Any potential changes to the rule would be in keeping with the letter and spirit of the law — as well as the reasonable expectations of the American people for the government to be good stewards of taxpayer funds.”

In an email to local WIC agency directors, the Rev. Douglas Greenaway, the president of the National WIC Association, assured providers that the proposed rules did not yet have “the weight of law.” But he acknowledged that this caveat “may not resonate with immigrant families” who are now weighing their need for WIC services against their desire for a permanent future in the United States.

Mr. Wheeler of the Catholic Legal Immigration Network said lawyers began seeing the anxiety over a year ago, when a leaked draft of an unsigned executive order aimed to promote “immigrant self-sufficiency.” Then, in January, the State Department revised the Foreign Affairs Manual, used to determine whether to grant noncitizens entrance to the United States. Officials must now carefully consider the likelihood that the candidate for entry will become a burden to taxpayers, and can factor a family member’s or sponsor’s use of public benefits into their decision.

Immigrants’ reaction is a pattern providers have seen before. In WIC, unlike SNAP, most agencies do not solicit citizenship information. But in 2014, the State of Indiana — under Mike Pence, then governor and now vice president — began requiring applicants to affirm their citizenship or “qualified alien” status on WIC intake forms. Women immediately began refusing to enroll, said Colleen Batt, an Indiana WIC agency director at the time.

Throughout the first year of the Trump presidency, agencies in regions with high immigrant populations have reported canceled appointments, urgent requests for disenrollment and even subsequent requests to have any record of families purged from the database.

Immigrants who have withdrawn from these services are reluctant to speak out about their plight owing to fears that identifying themselves publicly could result in legal repercussions.

In New Jersey, three neighboring counties — Union, Essex and Hudson — have immigrant populations above 25 percent, according to census data. In those counties, participation in some elements of the Community FoodBank of New Jersey’s outreach programming fell by almost half between 2016 and 2017, according to Julienne Cherry, the bank’s director of agency relations.

As of November 2017, the New Jersey SNAP program also reported a decrease of 8.1 percent in statewide participants over a one-year period. Enrollment rates in Essex and Union Counties had dropped by more than 10 percent.

According to preliminary data, Florida saw a 9.6 percent decrease in WIC participation over the one-year period from November 2016 to 2017. Texas lost 7.4 percent of WIC participants — and some offices in heavily Spanish-speaking communities there say they are considering laying off employees because of the drastically decreasing caseload.

Adele LaTourette, the director of the New Jersey Anti-Hunger Coalition, said a church food pantry specifically organized as a safe space for immigrants has seen “unprecedented decline,” as have reduced-cost breakfast and lunch programs in schools. Ms. LaTourette, who also convenes the New Jersey SNAP Working Group and serves on the state’s WIC Advisory Council, said the same concerns have echoed through every round-table discussion she has led for nutrition services since the start of the administration.

National WIC Association members in California, New York and Colorado have aired similar complaints.

Some local agencies have begun planning training to help their staff navigate what could be ahead: interactions with immigration enforcement agents, increasingly anxious clients and final regulations. But they say they know — just as the White House does — that as the fear factor among immigrants outpaces the administration’s crackdown, the question of whether new public charge policies ever come to fruition is, in some ways, irrelevant.

Glenn Thrush contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A17 of the New York edition with the headline: Immigrants Abandon Public Nutrition Services. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe